Hello guys,
I was just wondering how many of you agree with this. I, who's desire
it is to become an open source .NET Framework programmer, look at all of the
both open source, and not to mention, Microsoft-provided products, and I can't
tell you how much lazy programming I see out there. I'm not calling you lazy
programmers, so please, please don't take it that way. I'm just saying, that
for the masses, and especially for the many blind and visually impaired users
like me who rely on everything being labeled so that screen readers, or
software that converts text on screen to speech, can understand and provide
the right information. Half of the time, I will download a piece of software
whether open source or otherwise, and I will never be able to utilize it due to
nothing being labeled, or some things being labeled and others not, giving only
half the experience to someone hard of seeing like me. Now, what I am
proposing is strong and provocative, but I think that it could potentially be a
good thing if implemented correctly. I think that it would be a good idea for
Visual Studio to have a compilation requirement that all elements are labeled,
and all UIA properties exposable by a control are implemented. Microsoft
themselves are lazy when it comes to that; a lot of their new interface for
Windows server 2012 for instance, has so much mislabeled and missing UIA
content that either screen readers don't read at all, or they read spurious
content, as if they are reading .NET classes, instead of application-generated,
administrator-friendly messages. My friend thinks that this would only work if
Microsoft themselves built this in, and he may be right. But I definitely
think that it should be required on most open source projects and open source
frameworks that all elements be labled and exposed that way people of all
abilities and disabilities alike can benefit. I don't see how it would work in
the commercial sector unless Microsoft implemented it. Tell me what you guys
think.
